On July 1st we celebrated Canada's 158th birthday of Confederation. On Friday, July 4th Americans will celebrate 249 years. Happy Birthday to both nations. These two countries are young compared to many nations around the world and we're both experiencing growing pains. I hope the next century will be kind to us all.
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| The birds always fly with abandon in the early morning |
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| I enjoy the beautiful red flowers |
Hello and welcome to Friday's Skywatch post,
It has been raining so very heavily now for what seems like forever. It makes it difficult to go anywhere. But today it stopped raining and the sun came out. I couldn't get away early but in the late evening I went to the grocery store for a few items and snapped these night photos.
It was much warmer than it has been in a long while and it felt so good. You can see some of the apple blossoms are out in full force but haven't started to blossom on other trees. I'm hoping it will be sunny more frequently soon so I can get out and enjoy the blossoms more fully and during the day too.
A few years ago I learned that many of the city's cherry trees were gifts from Japan. In the early 1930s the mayors of Kobe and Yokohama in Japan gifted 500 Ojochin variety cherry trees to the City of Vancouver, British Columbia. The trees were meant to honour the Japanese-Canadian veterans of WW1. A few years later, Bunjiro and Kimi Uyeda, a local business owner and philanthropist couple, donated another 100 cherry trees to the city's park board. The citizens and visitors alike have been enjoying the blossoms ever since. Today we enjoy thousands of cherry trees all over the city and they are in full bloom from late March to about the end of Apri with some areas starting earlier and some starting later. Right now there is a Cherry Blossom Festival going on. I've never attended myself because it's often still cold and blustery and it's also a very busy time for me in general. But the moment the sun shines and I have a few spare moments I get out and take some photos.
During Covid, the city put seating in many streets all around town so people could visit outdoors instead of in their homes. After things got back to more or less normal, the city decided to continue with these outdoor seating areas and they've become a nice place to rest or visit, or both. Sometimes they have live free music. I noticed they added several tables and chairs on the opposite side of the street (the side on which I'm standing to take a photo).
On Wednesday the sun came out and brightened the day a bit. I managed to capture a bit of blue in the sky.
Hello friends and fellow bloggers,
In another week it will be Christmas.
In today's photos you'll see that there is no more snow on the mountains. Our temperatures are currently two times higher than the norm (usually 5 Celsius but currently anywhere from 9-11 Celsius) and there is no likelihood of the white stuff by next week unless things change substantially. It's okay by me. In fact we don't often get snow in December as far as I can remember.
I took these photos on December 18th. It was actually a beautiful and warmish day.
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| You can clearly see the "line" on the mountain. |
The mountain in the last photo is called Grouse Mountain and is home to one of the ski hills in the local area. The 'line' going from top to bottom of the mountain is where the skiing slop is located. The ski slopes in the area opened last week or the week before. At that time I could visibly see the snow on the mountains. At the moment there is none and none is expected soon. I
I hope it doesn't mean major losses for the skiing companies but they've been having a difficult decade. The future doesn't look that promising either. I got curious and found this article on the issue if you'd like to read more.
Thank you for joining in and reading my Skywatch Friday post today. I wish you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas.
Hi friends and fellow bloggers,
Happy Friday and Happy weekend to you all.
I was very grateful to wake up Thursday to see that the rain stopped for a while and I actually saw some blue sky and white cloud. After a forecast of several storms and daily rain for a week that was a blessing. In fact, the weather forecast has changed so that we had a break today and tomorrow and some sunny skies are expected. However, rain is in the forecast every day again next week. I do like rain believe it or not. After all, I do live in a rainforest. But even I have my limits as to how much rain is tolerable.
The following photos were taken on Thursday afternoon/evening. Enjoy and thanks for stopping by! Joining in with Skywatch Friday.
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| November 7, 2024 |
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| November 7, 2024 |
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| November 5, 2024 |
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| November 5, 2024 |
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| November 4, 2024 |
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| November 4, 2024 |
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| November 1, 2024 |
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| November 1, 2024 |
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| November 1, 2024 |
These are the skies in early November. It's mostly been wet and cold but we also had some brilliantly blue coloured skies. It's always good to have colour in the sky after days of dull, gray, rainy days.
Thank you for stopping by my post for Skywatch Friday this week.
Hello friends and fellow bloggers,
Happy Friday and best wishes to you wherever you are in the world.
Our weather this week has been a bit cool and overcast. It also rained a bit but today, Thursday, the sun came out and we had a brilliant day. However, as you can see from the first photo we are again expecting some rain. I'm happy there'll also be a bit of sunshine because I'm no where near ready for winter which is when we typically get a lot of rain.
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| I tried to capture the birds in flight but they are far away. |
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| I never get tired of this view. |
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| I'm also very happy for these trees since I no longer have trees in my garden. |
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| The time was approximately 6:15 p.m. |
On July 1st we celebrated Canada's 158th birthday of Confederation. On Friday, July 4th Americans will celebrate 249 years. Happy Birth...
